


Auld Lang Syne

by katewonder



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Yuletide, holiday fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katewonder/pseuds/katewonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Millie returns home for the holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Auld Lang Syne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magpieinthesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpieinthesky/gifts).



Slowly, Millie was starting to learn that life was not how it was in the books she had read before running away from Series Ten. There were lots of small things, like how school was not full of half as many adventures as her books had lead her to believe, but the worst thing of all was snow. Snow was a vicious lie. In the books, every time it had snowed it had been described as a dusting of powdered sugar that gently covered the ground. The books had made it seem like snow was ethereal and amazing, that snowball fights were fun, that building a snowman was easy. Lies, all of it lies.

The books had never mentioned how cold it was. How wet it was. How when your mittens and skirts got wet it took them hours to dry, and how up until that point you were cold and wet and soggy. Christopher told her that there were good parts to snow, but until he proved that in a way that didn’t involve him magically hitting her with snowballs she was going to ignore him.

Millie was slowly getting used to the feeling that she wasn’t going to fit in completely in this new world that she had found herself in. Not through a lack of trying, but through the things she couldn’t control, like the colour of her skin, or how she didn’t deal well with changing weather patterns, or how she expected life to be like it was in the storybooks that her school friends made fun of her for. Sometimes she felt like she was never going to fit in, not with her school friends at least. It was different at the Castle. The only time she ever felt like she belonged was when she was allowed back to Chrestomanci Castle for the holidays, because then, at the very least, she wasn’t the only person out of place in the world.

Even if she was cross with Christopher -and she was very cross with Christopher- cross in the way she got when he didn’t answer her letters. He was fine, she knew this because Conrad and Elizabeth were actually half decent penpals. Having a penpal was something she had wanted desperately because having someone to write letters to was such an important part of the Millie series where Millie had written to her friend Cora when Cora had done a semester abroad and over the course of the book they together had caught a jewel thief. None of Millie’s letters had been that exciting. All of her letters to Christopher had gone unanswered.

The train ride back from school was long, and her carriage had been emptied of people her own age and was now full of middle-aged men who had looked at her like she was intruding. She had wanted to tell them exactly who she was, who she used to be, who her guardian was now, but she didn’t. She just folded herself into her seat and reread her favourite Millie book again. The one where Millie had been so cross with Delphina, honestly she was hoping the way that Millie had dealt with it would inspire her on how to deal with Christopher. But in reality she was probably just going to shout at him until he started to look sad and then forgive him.

When she got to the station nobody was there to collect her.

Because of course nobody was there to collect her.

“Miss Millie,” said the station master, as he unloaded her trunk from the train. “Your friends aren’t here today.” He sounded relieved. He probably was. The last time she had come home Christopher had made a scene.

“I think perhaps they have forgotten me,” she said. “Do you mind watching my trunk? I’ll send someone back for it.”

“Of course,” he said, and smiled at her. She was going to have to remember to write him a thank you card, it was good manners after all. Her charm mistress at school was always going on about how you should send thank you cards, so the woman would probably be pleased when Millie told her she had finally had an excuse to send one.

\---

It took her half an hour longer to get to the castle than usual, the snow on the pathways had hindered her progress and the longer she was outside in the cold, the angrier she got at Christopher. And also Conrad and Elizabeth because she had told them when she would be home and when to collect her. The Castle grounds were empty, and nobody answered the front door when she knocked so she let herself in through the side entrance, in through the kitchens and out into the foyer.

The foyer was a flurry of activity. Elizabeth was up a ladder trying to hang tinsel in a way that looked entirely too dangerous for her to be doing it at all, while Anderson was doing something with baubles and the bannister on the staircase. There were three new faces that she didn’t know yet, but was sort of excited to meet. Once she stopped being angry at all of them for forgetting her at the station, that is. All of them were busy decorating and none of them had noticed her coming in.

“Ahem,” she said and the room fell completely silent.

“Millie,” Elizabeth said, staring down at her from on top of the ladder. “You’re not supposed to be back until tomorrow.”

“No,” Millie said. “I told Gabriel that I would be back Friday. It’s Friday.”

“Is it?” Anderson, all wide eyes and a panicked expression on his face, asked. “I thought it was Wednesday.”

“It’s definitely Friday,” Millie said.

“Oh no,” Anderson said.

Elizabeth climbed down from the ladder and threw her arms around Millie. “You’re all wet,” she said.

“Walking through the snow from the station will do that to a girl,” Millie said, hugging Elizabeth back. It wasn’t her fault that she had been forgotten. No, she was happy to blame that entirely on Christopher. “Where’s Christopher?” she asked, sweetly, in that way she did when she was angry.

“Upstairs,” Anderson said. “He and Conrad were in the sitting room last time I saw them.”

“Excellent,” Millie said, skipping up the stairs, two at a time. Unladylike, screeched the voice of the charm mistress in her head. She ignored it. On the top of the landing, Conrad was trying to affix a small bushel of holly to the walls, and when he saw her he froze. His face shifting into an expression of dumbstruck horror.

“You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow,” he noted, in a calmer tone than she expected from him.

“Well, obviously you are all wrong because I am here today,” Millie said. “Where’s Christopher?”

“Uh,” said Conrad.

“Um,” said Elizabeth.

“Well you see,” said Anderson.

“What’s he done now?” Millie asked, starting to worry. Maybe he’d lost another life. Maybe he was going to need the one that she used to get to different worlds back. Maybe he was down to just one life left. No, she would have heard. Surely. “Is he okay?” she asked.

“This is a _disaster_ ,” Christopher said, bursting out of a room, looking possibly the least composed she had seen him in quite a while. His hair looked as if he had been running his hands through it. “Millie’s going to be home tomorrow and nothing is done.”

“Uh, Christopher,” Conrad said.

“What, Grant? Can’t you see that I am _trying_ to get everything done?” Christopher said, sweeping into the room. He clasped Millie by the hands, kissed her cheek. “Hello, Millie, good to see you,” he said, before sweeping away. He got halfway down the staircase before it hit him and he spun back around to look at them, the same expression of horror on his face that was on Conrad’s.

“Hello,” Millie said, crossing her arms across her chest, putting the sternest expression she could manage onto her face. It was hard to be cross with him when he was standing there in front of her, looking so surprised to see her.

“Are you early?” he asked, trying to smooth his hair down.

“It’s Friday,” Conrad said, quietly.

Christopher swore, and then pretended he didn’t, affixing the vaguest expression he had on his face, as if this was all completely his plan. He had been doing so well, now she wanted to shove him again.

“Someone needs to go and fetch my luggage from the station,” Millie said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” And with that she gathered her skirts up and stalked off in the direction of her room.

\---

It took fifteen minutes for someone to come to check on her, and it was Conrad. She expected it would be Conrad. He always was the one who checked on either of them, their perfect go-between.

“Christopher is now sulking, in the vaguest way possible where he pretends he doesn’t care about his hurt feelings at all,” Conrad said, as he snuck into her room with a pot of tea and tray of scones. “Which is something that is entirely on him and not at all on you. How was your trip?”

“Long,” she said, accepting the tea and scones from him. “And then I had to walk through the snow.”

“We should have been there,” Conrad said, and smiled at her. “I’ve been sent up to tell you that you need to stay here for half an hour and then come down and pretend to be surprised. Because otherwise he will sulk even more about how his plans were ruined.”

Conrad stood up and went to leave, and turned back to her suddenly. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said. “Even if it’s just for Christopher controlling purposes”

“Has he been a disaster?” Millie asked, sipping at her tea. She still preferred it cold, even after all these years but she still hadn’t been able to find a passable replication of the tea she drank from home. Sometimes, when she was cross with him, Christopher would go and buy her tea from Ten and she would cherish every drop until it was gone.  

“Not more so than usual,” Conrad said, smiling at her. “It’s possible that he’ll be more of a disaster trying to impress you.” With that, and one last smile, he left her to herself.

Millie drank her tea, ate her scones and tried not to fall asleep (though that would show them all, wouldn’t it). She changed her dress, even though the dress she changed into was too tight across her shoulders. It would do for now, until her trunk arrived from the station. She hoped someone had gone to fetch it, because otherwise she had practically nothing to wear and nobody would be getting their gifts.

She walked down the stairs and tried to ignore the three newcomers (she was going to have to quietly ask Conrad for their names) staring at her as she did so. As she got down into the foyer she realised why they were all staring at her. Christopher was in the middle of them, and was looking so vague that Millie worried for a second he was going to pull something in his face.

Above the group of them was a huge banner. In big, uneven and multicoloured letters were the words WELCOME BACK, MILLIE. “That is quite possibly the worst banner I’ve ever seen,” she said.

“Yes,” Christopher said, his vaguest expression on his face. “They didn’t try at all.”

“I love it,” Millie said, her face breaking into a grin. She loved it so much. They had made her a banner. Sure, they had forgotten what day of the week it was but that happened to everyone, surely.

“It was my idea then,” Christopher said, and he was smiling. Elizabeth swatted his arm, but she was smiling too.

“You’re the worst,” Conrad said, quietly, but Millie turned her smile onto him.

“Thank you,” she said, to Conrad and then to Christopher. She let him sweep her up into his arms, hold her close.

“Missed you, Goddess,” he said, quietly, as if it was a secret. As if the others didn’t know that he was fond of her. What a ridiculous child, she thought to herself, patting his back. She loved all of these people, even the three new ones who didn’t have names to her yet. Now, even though it was snowing and her friends had forgotten her at the station and how sometimes she felt completely out of place, she was home.

And that was all that mattered.

 

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, MERRY YULETIDE. I hope you enjoyed this fic, it was harder than I thought it would be, probably because I love the Chrestomanci series so much and my inner child was shrieking at me the whole time that I was ruining everything. So hopefully I did an okay job. This was my first time participating in Yuletide, so I hope I did everything okay. 
> 
> <333


End file.
